Posts Tagged ‘energy

Last August, the U.S. Army held a three-day conference in Portsmouth, Virginia, to look at new developments in military science and hardware. The confab was called the “2008 Mad Scientist Future Technology Seminar.” Really. It was.

Presentations covered the following areas:

•Seminar Overview (Bushnell, NASA-Langley)

•Robotics (Jones, iRobot Corporation)

•Human Life Extension (Coles, Gerontology Research Group)

•Quantum Technology (Dowling, Louisiana State University)

•Molecular Manufacturing (Jacobstein, Teknowledge)

•Machine Intelligence (Yudkowsky, Singularity Institute)

•Global Sensor Grid (Orcutt, University of California – San Diego)

•Synthetic Biology (Weiss, Princeton University,

•Virtual Reality (Peterson, The Strategy Augmentation Group)

•Beyond Silicon Computing (Mazumder, National Science Foundation)

•Nano Materials (Sulcoski, National Ground Intelligence Center)

•Alternative Energy (Bushnell, NASA Langley Research Center)

•Brain/Neurologics (Braunreiter, SAIC)

•Emerging Individual Empowerment (Petersen, The Arlington Group)

•Superempowered Individuals (Smart, Acceleration Studies Foundation)

…

The Mad Scientist group sees more than just a world of danger in the 2030s. “Most likely results include an increased life span, a solution to the energy crisis, ready availability of food and fresh water to all, a global distribution of technology, education, economics, and — therefore — wealth. This will reduce the tension between the ‘haves’ and ‘have-nots’ while the capabilities of robotics and access to virtual reality to both care for and entertain will create the perception of well-being almost universally around the globe. Advancements are limited only by imagination and resources.”

At the focal point, solar furnaces can achieve temperatures of 5,430 ºF (3,000 ºC). The idea is not new—coming from ancient Greece—but their potential is starting to become more relevant now as we try to cut dependency on fossil fuels.

solar power is a relatively untapped energy which is abundant. with recent developments in the manufacturing of the collectors, like nanosolar, perhaps there is hope we can figure out cheap/open solar systems.

The Native American voting block in USA swing states like Arizona and New Mexico can be crucial.

but what happens when Native Americans want to opt out of the USA altogether?

so it is no surprise that the US election debates never even mentions that ‘native americans’ exist. same thing went for the recent canadian election. I guess debating against the illegitimacy of a government’s sovereignty isn’t a vote winner.

Sometime overnight Saturday, someone detonated a large explosion next to the sour gas pipeline about 50 kilometres from the B.C.-Alberta border.

The blast did not rupture the pipeline, but blew a 1.8-metre crater in the ground, which was discovered by a hunter on Sunday.

The previous week, suspicious handwritten letters arrived at newspapers and a TV station in Dawson Creek calling EnCana Corp. and other energy companies “terrorists” for expanding “deadly” gas wells and giving the firms a deadline to shut down operations, including the gas plant served by the pipeline.

RCMP spokesman Sgt. Tim Shields called the blast a serious criminal matter but he stopped short of calling the explosion terrorism.

“It was set there … with the intent to blow up that pipeline. That’s a threat to the infrastructure of this province,” said Shields. “We’re not categorizing this as terrorism.”